It seems like you can have experiences in dreams without all of the sensory inputs and sometimes I have dreams that are purely experiential. I know what happened in them, had the experience and the fullness of it. Not sure how to explain it, it's like you just take in the experience as a unit. A lot of the details, like some senses, are just not even bothered with if they aren't contributing to the overall value of the experience. It's like that part of you knows exactly what it wants to experience and isn't interested in the rest.

I had a dream recently where there was this book of experiences that you could just open a page and absorb the entire experience at once. I held on to this thing, this thick little book, and felt this incredible rush of emotions. It felt so good, just holding it, knowing that I could have anything that was inside of it.

Whenver I get lucid, I want to experience everything the same way as waking life, all of the familiar sensory inputs, etc and this is what I experience, as long as I don't dwell too long on one particualr thing. But I'm wondering if there is a deeper level to experience then at where you are allowing the dream to give you the experience it wants.

Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world? Morpheus

I have had a lot of dreams with no sensory impute in the normal sense, they wont always come but are in or from the void and then will happen from that point on and normally in the void.They dont last long but I treasure them, it is the feeling of existing but without senses that is precious and I look for these events from time to time.

I really cant see any reason to have the same experiences in a LD as in normal life all time.

Who are you I asked, the reply "dont be silly, we are your daughers" many years before they were born

Peter wrote:I have had a lot of dreams with no sensory impute in the normal sense, they wont always come but are in or from the void and then will happen from that point on and normally in the void.They dont last long but I treasure them, it is the feeling of existing but without senses that is precious and I look for these events from time to time.

I really cant see any reason to have the same experiences in a LD as in normal life all time.

Wanted to compare notes on your void experiences since I think I've had the same thing but not sure. For me what I call a void experience is those times where there are no sensory inputs, you could say between dreams because one has ended and usually another starts up soon after. In this state, I feel like I am floating through space, mostly on my back (dream body). It's generally dark as in black screen. I am aware of that feeling of floating plus a really wonderful good feeling, hard to describe it (I would call it a spiritual feeling, but that doesn't work for other people). It's like being suspended in some kind of womb or something for lack of a better word, again difficult to describe. Like a state of pure existence.

There are other times during my dreams where a lot of sensory details seem to just be skipped because they are not important enough to waste time and energy on. In those times it feels like the dreams are just trying to get in as much experience as possible, focusing on the important parts. I wake up feeling like I had been starved and eating like a pig, but not food, dream experiences. In those dreams, I am aware that a lot of details were just glossed over and something deeper or just more quantity was being sought after.

Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world? Morpheus

I didn't read the entire thread...I'm just responding to your original post. I recently was able to snap myself back into a visual LD from blackness by doing a reality check - my go-to RC is to look at my hands. So, even though it was dark, I help my hands up to see if I could see them, and light began to show up behind my hands and then suddenly I was in a street scene. Usually when things go black I just give up and wake up and then go back to sleep. So, that was cool!

I experienced something strange last night, and it fits with this thread. (Not the off tangent one I went on, but back to the original title, "Don't give up on the lucid dream when the visuals go away". I have a classic case of this happening last night.

I was lucid in a dream and decided to go outside and it was snowing and there was a car parked on the curb and it was covered in snow. For some reason I wanted to go in and see what would happen, so I gestured from a distance for the snow to wipe off and the door opened at the same time. I entered, but it was pitch black, the dream faded and I woke up. So I was just laying in bed with my eyes closed and thinking about the dream. I was wishing I had looked inside the car first because perhaps the dark void gave me no visuals and that's why it ended. I thought, inside my head, how although I have kept my eyes closed, I know for a fact that I am awake. I can just feel it. I heard a helicopter in the distance and was contemplating the difference between the dream world from within and the obviously real reality that I can hear with my own ears. (This is something I do often after a lucid dream and just debrief it all with myself before I open my eyes. I can tell I am awake, just by the way I'm thinking. Then I thought... ah well, it was a fun dream while it lasted. I'll just open my eyes and see what time it is.

To my surprise I was sleeping in snow, and in the same dreamscape right beside the same car! And for some reason it was a lot more real and stable and vivid. I'm not sure why, but I could have sworn I was awake, but I wasn't! Perhaps that is why the LD that followed was more vivid. I DID wake up in a way. I woke up my lucid mind, but was still dreaming. I mean I was lucid before this happened but then I became MORE lucid.

Anyway, I like to share my lucid dreams and this was the perfect thread for this one.

A false awakening - they still get sometimes. I think you are correct when you say that the FA engages the senses as your mind is closer to waking life and its still fooled. Nice that the dream was enhanced and you got to enjoy it some more

Who are you I asked, the reply "dont be silly, we are your daughers" many years before they were born

False Awakening. Interesting you bring that up because last night I was PLAGUED with them! I just kept waking up and needing to do a reality check to find out I was still dreaming. So this was certainly connected to the false awakening phenomenon. But my false awakening was with eyes still closed.

Its the way Ive been pulling myself in to a LD.. first of all things start with blackness.. I often start off with hearing things or just feeling myself somewhere else and then have to work at things to get myself into the dream. Yesterdays LD it started off with me sitting at the front of a carriage with my sister.. I knew and could feel this. I could also hear as someone asked me if I could hold their baby and i said yes and then reached out and was handed the baby but I still didnt even have my dream sight coming in at that point.

As I love babies.. I found it was easier to focus on the feel of that baby then on the other parts of the dream and be madly jigging it on my lap (using dream movement too) to keep me in the LD while my dream sight had yet to come in. After 30 seconds or thou I finally could see.

One thing Ive discovered with using the vague things which are going in and out before one is in the dream with all senses.. is to not use noise to try to hold me in one. When I did that, my focus on the noise brought the noise in so terribly loudly that it hurt my ears and threw me out of the dream I was almost fully in.

The other day I got a LD come in in which was just vague sight.. just shadows... so poor visuals that I couldnt even see what it was I was looking at. So in that situation I just ignored the fact my sight wasnt properly in (and i was wavering completely in and out of the dream) and just tried to walk towards the shadows just trusting that things would come clear. That helped to stabilise me in the dream and the shadows became a building with a door.

For me there are two states of blackness, on entry with HI i may drift in and out of a lucid dream until it is formed up and wont always have sight or other normal sensory awareness but will be aware and feel the energy of the dream.

The second is when I ask for or look for the blackness in the dream, I will often meditate from within the dream in what I call the space between the dreams. For me its like the vacuum of space and there would be no space without it so it is a force of its own and can be enjoyed in a body less state.

Who are you I asked, the reply "dont be silly, we are your daughers" many years before they were born

Peter wrote: For me there are two states of blackness, on entry with HI i may drift in and out of a lucid dream until it is formed up and wont always have sight or other normal sensory awareness but will be aware and feel the energy of the dream.

I have this experience as well. Most of tiime when there is the dark period it's followed by a brief loss of awareness then pop into a fully developed dream scene. Other times there's a transition from dark to dream scene that I can watch. My favorites are the ones where I watch the dream scene form and then tell myself to step into it. At that point it goes from an image on what looks kind of like a 2 dimensional screen to a 3 dimensional solid world.

Peter wrote:The second is when I ask for or look for the blackness in the dream, I will often meditate from within the dream in what I call the space between the dreams. For me its like the vacuum of space and there would be no space without it so it is a force of its own and can be enjoyed in a body less state.

Meditating inside of a dream sounds really interesting and of course another thing to try. I just need to have more LDs to try all of these things. I do like that pure state of existance that we talked about and I'm fairly sure I can get that if I ask for it. Very nice also with soothing music going on in the background, had that twice so far (guitar and piano). Especially love the peaceful feeling that goes with this.

Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world? Morpheus